As you have likely have read in the news today, the hacktivist group Anonymous launched #OpIsrael - an online attack of Israeli websites in retaliation for recent missiles attacks from Gaza. Through efforts on social media outlets, IRCs and Pastebin, Anonymous called for its tens of thousands of supporters from around the world to join this attack.
This morning, Radware’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) released a new threat alert regarding an upcoming DDoS attack on Israeli websites including the IDF website, the Prime Minister Office website, Israeli banks, airlines and infrastructure sites. The attack started at 10AM Israel time on 11/15 and is expected to last for many hours.
The attackers are launching a well-coordinated distributed denial of service attack using network flood tools such as ByteDos3.2 (ICMP & SYN floods) and the infamous Mobile LOIC tool. The attackers are hiding behind TOR networks to prevent their identification.
As I mentioned in my previous post, (/blog/security/2012/11/it-security-tipping-point/) many cyber attackers and hacktivists focus on taking critical applications and networks down for long periods of time. It seems as this rings true with Anonymous launching #OpIsrael to deny legitimate flow of traffic to the affected sites. Although these hackers touted they were successful in taking down dozens of sites, only a few were actually down for some time or were defaced.
Click here to read the full ERT threat alert report.
To learn more about the #OpIsrael attack and to read commentary from Radware security experts, please read the following articles:
New York Times Bits Blog: Anonymous Attacks Israeli Web Sites
Information Week: Anonymous Launches OpIsrael DDoS Attacks After Internet Threat
Fox Business: Anonymous Hackers Target Israel After Gaza Airstrike